Finally a convergence device that works
Written: May 09 '03 (Updated May 09 '03)
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Pros: Solid construction, color screen, flat profile, tons of available software. Fantastic Outlook sync. Speakerphone!
Cons: Case, needs a reboot now and then, volume button, general lack of buttons.
The Bottom Line: This is a definite winner. Finally, a phone, PDA, portable storage device, gaming platform and book/magazine all rolled into one device that can slide into your pants pocket.
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| playbakda's Full Review: Siemens SX56 Smartphone |
The SX56 is a true convergence device. For a lot of you that have been waiting to have your cake and eat it to, a slice just showed up. While no device is perfect, this one has a lot to be said for it.
This review is on the phone and software. I will save my AT&T service comments for another review. As far as the service relates to the phone, AT&T has the latest version of the phone software on the phone (3.14). Based on what I read in the forums, T-Mobile equipment is on an older version and it has caused some problems. I have to say one thing about AT&T’s GSM service in Texas. If you travel very far from the major metro areas on a regular basis, GSM is not for you. It has worked well in town for me and the GSM plans are much more attractive price-wise. Other than that, it’s like most cellular service, hit and miss.
Before I start on the phone, let me give you my background. I have had a Nokia 6160 for about 5 years. I have never owned a Palm or other PDA prior to the SX56. I carry my phone in my pocket. I don’t like wearing them on my belt. The clips break, phone falls off, etc. I had a Nokia 6360 for a short period of time (about 3 weeks) before it was stolen. I liked the 6360 because of the Outlook sync features. I have to say that they pale in comparison to the SX56 functionality, but more on that later. Finally, I am never far from my phone cradle or car charger, so my battery has never dropped below half. I probably make five to six 10 minute calls a day. I use the Pocket PC portion a lot. I have owned the phone about five weeks.
Before I start, a detailed 138 page manual in pdf format can be found here:
http://www.my-siemens.com/com.aperto/MySiemens/Files/Addon/an/us/ms//usermanual_1025.pdf
You can find out most of the hardware and software details there. If the link does not work just go to the Siemens site and do a search on the SX56. I will limit my comments to a brief overview and my related experience.
SX56 Hardware
What’s in the box:
- The phone itself.
- A vinyl case (I wasn’t impressed)
- Two extra styluses
- AC power cord
- Earbud and microphone for hands free
- USB data cradle that the power cord plugs into.
- Power cord adapter that allows you to hook the phone up directly to an outlet without using the cradle. Makes for lighter packing if you don’t want to drag the cradle along.
The battery is already attached to the phone. In fact it is attached with 4 screws. Interesting design. You don’t have to worry about it coming loose. Just a note to new users, you have to turn on the phone (button on top) to activate the phone. It comes with a half charge, but will not charge until you actually turn it on.
Hardware:
The AT&T version is silver. I do not use the case for it. I carry it ‘naked’ in my pocket. It is a little heavy for a shirt pocket, but not a suit coat pocket. I do not use screen protectors either. A friend of mine used one on his IPAQ and the screen was never quite the same after that. I do carry a lens cloth with me to clean the screen periodically.
The unit is slim, which for the pocket is a good thing. It feels good in my hand. I am 6’ male. In one of the other reviews, the reviewer said you needed two hands to dial. That’s not true. I can hold the phone in my hand and dial with the pad of my thumb using just one hand. It requires no more dexterity than my Nokia did. The software phone buttons are quite large and easy to hit. They don’t take a lot of pressure. You can even press and hold a number to call up a speed dial. I have been advised by several people that fingernails are not good for the screen. I don’t know why this is, but you should use the stylus or the soft pad of your finger.
The screen is bright and easy to read. You can change the font if have to. The backlight is strong and bright. If it times out, you can just tap the screen to turn it back on. I can read the phone easily (i.e. Microsoft Reader ebooks) in bright sunlight. The screen has been subjected to most abuses I can think of and seems no worse for wear up to this point.
The stylus in the antenna. This is a nice feature. It unscrews to produce a stub that you can reboot the unit with. Very thoughtful considering most Microsoft products rely on rebooting to clear problems. Probably something I won’t see fixed in my lifetime. I actually loaned the nub end to a Blackberry user that had to reboot her system so it comes in handy sometimes.
There is a card slot in the bottom of the phone that will take a postage sized memory card up to 512MB (yes you read that right). Just be warned that while the 256MB card is about $60, the 512MB is about $400. You pay for bleeding edge. I actually stripped a 32MB card out of my IPAQ MP3 player and it worked fine after the system reformatted it. You can use the card just like a giant floppy disk. I keep ebooks and maps on mine. I also use it to move large files between computers. The only problem here is that the card is spring loaded and there is no cover door. I have had it pop out once or twice after grabbing it out of my pocket. A small door here would be helpful to keep lint out and the card in.
The power/data cable also hooks into the bottom. When you use the cradle, this works pretty well. The ear piece is also on the bottom. I don’t use the earbud or headphones. The jack had a rubber plug that I proceeded to lose on the third day I had it. It is not attached to the phone and it is quite small. I put it in my pocket and that was the last I ever saw of it.
There is a volume button on the left side of the unit. The power button is on the top, as is the IR sensor/port. The buttons are made of the same stainless steel as the case. I think they will be quite durable. There are four other buttons, one each for the Contact list, Calendar, phone on, phone off. Finally there is a four way button/toggle that lets you scroll or page depending on the application. You can assign the buttons to different functions if you like. My only complaint here is that the volume key is a button. You have to press it multiple times to increase volume or to turn it off. It’s function is circular in nature. As you press it, the volume increases until max, then the next press turns off the sound, the next turns on vibrate and the next turns on the sound and then increases with each press. A wheel would have been more helpful here. It’s aggravating to ‘miss your stop’ and have to key through the whole sequence again. Of course you can use the stylus, but why should you have to?
Finally the sound. This unit can act as a speakerphone. This is a wonderful feature! By pressing and holding the ‘phone on’ button, the phone will go into speakerphone mode. You can take notes, look up contacts, check the calendar or perform any other program function while in speakerphone mode. This is great. If you take a note during the call, the phone time/date stamps it and if the person is in your contact list, it will add their name and phone number. I have to warn you that the ringer is not loud. The vibrate is a bit light as well. I have tried to set it to the loudest ring level, but it’s equivalent to about a medium on a Nokia. The phone conversation volume is more than adequate, as is the speakerphone volume, it just seems like the ring is not overly loud. You can use any .wav file for ring tones, which really opens up your universe. It may have something to do with how the file was recorded. I may try to record a louder version of my ring tone and see what happens.
Software:
This is where the phone really comes into its’ own. This unit uses the Pocket PC operating system, so all of the software that works on a Pocket PC will work on this device. That’s a big universe. It also uses the Arm processor. That is something you will need to know when ordering software.
Standard programs:
- Phone software
- Pocket Excel
- Pocket Word
- Image Viewer
- Microsoft Reader
- MSN Messenger
- Solitaire
- Calculator
- Inbox
- Contacts
- Calendar
- Infrared receiver
- File Explorer
- Internet Explorer
- Notes
- Tasks
What I added:
- Pocket Streets
- Fonix VoiceDial
Some of the items above are self explanatory, so I will only review certain ones that have helpful features.
Phone Software: Consists of the dialer, 99 speed dial locations, dialed/received/missed calls. The dialer allows you dial from the keypad (there is a backspace key for mistakes), contact list, speed dial or call list. You can activate a speed dial by pressing and holding the speed key. For two digit numbers, you press the first number, then the second number and hold. You can filter the dialed/received/missed calls list as needed.
Additionally, you can call up the notepad and recording software from the dialer just by tapping them. The dialer can be engaged by hitting the ‘phone on’ key or from the menu.
Your contact list contains all the information your Outlook contact list contains, so you can tap any number in the record and it will dial that number. As you know, most people seem to have four or five numbers now.
There is one quirk here I have to mention. For some reason, if you us ‘p’ (used for the pause in the dial sequence), it will change it to a digit 0 on it’s own. The network does not understand this (like when you want to tag your voicemail password onto your number) and will not complete the call. I’ve seen this problem in the forums and I don’t think there is fix for it yet.
Pocket Excel/Word: Not much to say here. They are the pocket version of the software you have come to know and love(hate). They do allow you to download and read e-mail attachments. Very slick. It also allows you to carry important documents around in soft copy and be able to access them without powering up the old laptop. There is a Pocket version of PowerPoint, but I have not used it yet. You can get an eval copy to try it out. Make sure you have that extra memory card.
Image Viewer: Let’s you look at the standard image formats. Food for thought, you can save that Yahoo map as a jpg or bmp file and take it with you.
Microsoft Reader: This is the best thing since sliced bread! Now you can take your novel with you. Hell, you can take all your magazines, novels and manuals with you. Have to kill some time at your kids volleyball tournament, pull out your phone and read a book. I love this feature. There are tons of free ebooks, but you can get the latest novels in ebook format. So now you can leave the phone, PDA and book at home. The type is very legible and backlit. I can read in the dark (airplanes or restaurants). It remembers where I left off and I can search the text. You can also download a free version of the dictionary from Microsoft to allow lookup. The Reader is a great feature that I have really enjoyed more than I thought I would.
MSN Messenger: I don’t use this. I guess I’m getting old. This just doesn’t seem to be a good method of communication for a handheld device.
Inbox: This allows you to download from any POP3 e-mail account. You can do multiple accounts. You can limit the e-mail to 1K to 3K so you can get the gist of what the message says. You can then mark the important ones for downloading in their entirety. You can set the interval for checking just like your regular software. Sending can be somewhat problematic. Most Internet/web based e-mail systems do not allow people not on their systems to send mail, so I was only able to send mail via one of my five providers. If this is important to you, you may want to check on this. Receiving was fine on all accounts. Please note that you can use your browser to call up you web mail and send that way, but it’s a bit awkward.
Internet Explorer: The only thing I have to say here is that the software allows you to optimize your browser. You can turn off animation, applets, audio and video. AT&T charges for e-mail and browsing by the Kbyte, not the hookup time. So you will want to limit your download size by removing images and other extraneous items. There are many sites that are optimized for hand devices. You can get news, weather, movie times and just about anything else, optimized for your screen. There is also some software out there that will allow you to use your screen in profile mode, which is much better for browsing.
I have used the internet portion for about a month, but discontinued it because I did not use it nearly as much as I thought I would. If you want e-mail, you will have to buy internet service. AT&T was about $20 for 8 MB of data. A little expensive for what I would use it for. The download speeds were comparable to 56K dial up speeds if you have everything turned off (images et al). So quick enough in a pinch.
ActiveSync: This is the SX56 PC sync software. It works just great. It has file explorer on it, so you can drag and drop files, or cut and paste them between your device and your PC. The Outlook sync is wonderful. You can sync your home and work computer. You put the device in the cradle and you can control which items you want to use (Contacts, tasks, inbox, calendar, files). It will sync up both devices. It allows line by line resolution of conflicting data, something that Nokia software does not do. It keeps good track of what’s updated, so conflicts are few. You then can take it from work to home and then it will sync up the home computer with your device and your work computer. This is a great feature.
Contacts/Calendar: Full feature, full view. You have everything you had in your Outlook Contacts and Calendar including notes, addresses, e-mails, all numbers and categories. The calendar offers all of the standard Outlook views.
This device does not come with voice dial. I bought Fonix VoiceDial which works great with this unit. VoiceDial requires no training and is very accurate.
Accessories:
You can buy a few accessories. I bought the car charger that also allows you to power the unit off a 9V battery in a pinch. I also bought the USB cord. This cord allows the unit to charge the battery via your PC’s USB port, in addition to being a data cable. If you don’t feel like dragging the cradle around, this is a good light addition to your bag.
This is a long review, but I like to cover things that are important to me, and I hope to you.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 550
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playbakda
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Reviews written: 4
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